Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They've sent in the cavalry! Imagine sending in the National Party to defend economic competence! Imagine sending Senator Nash from the National Party to try and lecture me about economic competence when the coalition's economic competence, driven by people like John Howard and the then leader of the National Party, was just to send money anywhere there was a problem: just send it out into the community and try and bribe your way back into office. Pork-barrel your way to government—that is the National Party approach. Senator Nash comes in here and starts trying to have a go at me about economic issues when she should actually have listened. I am sure somebody was listening and they said, 'You'd better get someone down there, because Senator Cameron is carving our economic credibility up.' It is not a big job, because there is not a lot of economic credibility there to carve up.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells interjecting—

Now they're all going! It would be microsurgery carving their economic credibility up—not a lot of it there!

Senator Abetz argues that it is about class envy and socialist dogma. The 'dogma of equal low-class service for all and the politics of envy'—that is how he describes trying to make sure that boilermakers, bus drivers and cleaners do not pay Senator Abetz's private health funds, that they do not subsidise me and that they do not subsidise Twiggy Forrest or Gina Rinehart. If it is Gina Rinehart or Twiggy Forrest or Clive Palmer against the general public, the coalition are on the side of the mining magnates every day. They want the ordinary workers—the boilermakers, the fitters, the bus drivers, the cleaners, the restaurant workers—to subsidise the health payments for these multibillionaires. I say that is not class warfare—it is class warfare from them on ordinary workers—I say it is the right thing to do. It is the economically responsi­ble thing for this government to do, and I am pleased that we have actually tackled this issue and are going to deal with it.

The coalition argues that it is going to be the end of the public system. The argument was that this was some sort of Greens proposal. I draw your attention to the fact that this is a bill that goes back to 2008. This was a bill where in 2008 the Labor Party tried to get some fairness and rational approaches into private health insurance. Professor Deeble, who is recognised as the leading expert on the public health system said that there would not be a significant cost to the public health system by doing this. He also said that it would not send the private health system broke.

And why would it send the private health system broke? This is a private health system that gets more subsidy than the whole manufacturing industry in this country, that employs a million people. The private health industry gets a bigger subsidy than the whole of the manufacturing industry. Where is the economic rationale for that? Where is the economic logic in that? There is none! And it is simply about the coalition supporting that big end of town—the private health industry—that supports them with donations for the next election. So if it is about a donation to the coalition or the good of the country, the coalition go for the donation every time. They will stand up for the mining magnates and they will stand up for the private health industry, a private health industry whose profits before tax increased to $1.27 billion for the year ended 31 December 2011.

We get all these lectures about the market operating: I do not hear Senator Abetz giving us a lecture about how an industry that is making billions of dollars of profit should not have any public subsidies. I did not hear that argument come through. Where was that argument? They are absolutely hypocritical in their approach. These people, if there is a quid in it for their election campaign their principles and policies go out the door. They will simply be sycophants for whatever industry is prepared to put money in, even if it is the tobacco industry.

I will not take any lectures from the coalition about good economics and I will not take any lectures from the coalition about a decent health system. Look at their record when they were in power: their record on health was abysmal. The first thing they did was scrap the Commonwealth Dental Program. The ratio of federal funding for public hospitals dropped to just over 40 per cent by 2007. In 2003 alone the Howard government ripped a billion dollars out of public hospitals, so do not come here lecturing us about economics or lecturing us about health. Your record is abysmal and you just do not have a clue about what is in the national interest. You would put your electoral interests before the national interest every time. You should be condemned for that. You should be supporting this bill because it is the right thing to do and it is the right thing for all Australians.